s' Company, London.

From Alexander W. Weddell, _Virginia Historical Portraiture_

Photo by Virginia State Library.]

[Illustration: Henry Wriothesley

(Third Earl of Southampton)

From the painting by Michiel Jansz van Miereveldt

From _The London Company of Virginia_ (New York and London, 1908)

Photo by Virginia State Library.]

[Illustration: SIR EDWIN SANDYS

From the Original Portrait by an Unknown Artist, now in the possession
of Sir Edmund Arthur Lechmere, Bart, Bramham Gardens, London, England

From Alexander W. Weddell, _Virginia Historical Portraiture_

Photo by Virginia State Library.]

[Illustration: Sir Thomas Dale

Portrait by an unknown artist of the Anglo-Flemish School painted in
oils early in the 17th Century. The original portrait is preserved in
the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, Richmond, Virginia

Photo by Virginia State Library.]

[Illustration: HENRY STUART

_Prince of Wales_

From Alexander Brown, _The Genesis of the United States_

Photo by Virginia State Library.]

The new charter having received the final seal in March 1612, a new
colony was established in Bermuda in the following July. Its early
history has a double significance for the later history of Virginia. In
the first place, the Bermuda colony emphasizes the growing interest of
the adventurers in what might be produced in America as against what
might be found by way of America. The occupation of the Bermuda Islands
might almost be described as a retreat from the earlier search for a
passage to China. The move could be viewed also as a reassertion of an
old interest in plundering the Spaniard, for the Bermudas lay athwart
the homeward route of Spain's treasure fleets. But in any case the
primary interest was in America and its own peculiar opportunities, and
the attention given by the early settlers in Bermuda to experiments
with tobacco, sugar, wine, ginger, and other such commodities suggests
that their purpose was not so much to plunder the Spaniard as rather to
emulate his success as a planter in the West Indies. Secondly, the
adventurers showed a marked inclination to encourage each adventurer to
meet his own costs. Provision was made for an early survey and division
of the land, with the result that men put their money chiefly into the
development of their own estates. A final survey was not completed
until 1617, but at that date some of the Bermuda adventurers at least
had known who their tenants were a